


ruin the ozone

by bottledregret



Series: I’m ‘Bout To... [1]
Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drugs, Eating Disorders, Heavy Angst, Lovers to enemies to lovers, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Recreational Drug Use, Rehab, Rehabilitation, Substance Abuse, THIS IS PART ONE MIND YOU, it ends happily, these tags are scary, theyre not that bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 18:14:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29458059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bottledregret/pseuds/bottledregret
Summary: High stakes, high minds, high life.The three principles Han Jisung lived his life on. The three principles he hasn’t heard in years.When Han Jisung returns to the city after years of being away, he is confronted all at once with whispered sneers, nasty rumors and bitter exes. Well, one bitter ex. Lee Minho, the man who broke his heart and wants nothing to do with him, is the only one who can help him.But five years of a tainted memory, a broken heart and sour tastes leave a stain and they're not sure this one will come out.
Relationships: Han Jisung | Han/Lee Minho | Lee Know
Series: I’m ‘Bout To... [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2163720
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	ruin the ozone

**Author's Note:**

> please mind the tags.  
> this is not how i envision the real boys and is just something i wanted to write to tell a story that i actually experienced. this will have three parts. please stick around for all three and read the tags at every update.

_ Wednesday, December 16th, 2020. 12:44 AM. _

_ Dear Jisung,  _

_ Nothing in this world is ever perfect. _

_ I fucking hate that word, actually. It makes my stomach twist, I’m so fucking tired of hearing it. Perfection doesn’t exist, it never did. It’s a false standard that we hold ourselves and others to, an impossible and unreachable height that we continue to fail to reach and that continues to disappoint us. Yet we worship it, like the Gods and our religious figures, we worship perfection. We practice perfection more than we practice religion. How fucking lame. _

_ Perfect isn’t a thing. There’s just a range between really bad and really good, but there is no such thing as perfect. That’s why I don’t believe in soulmates, also known as your “perfect half.” Nobody is perfect, we aren’t perfect and there will never be a perfect half. Some people fit into the ridges of our puzzle piece a little better than others do, and society tends to go with the piece that causes the least amount of pain to make fit. _

_ I kind of like the pain that emerged when our pieces fit together, or should I say, forcibly collided and got stuck. We didn’t fit, did we? We never fit. But we held on, and refused to let go. _

_ I think that’s where it fucked up. It wasn’t the fit, despite how abnormal and painful it was. It was the inability to erase you, the inability of your bruises on my organs to fade, the inability to flush out the remnants of your blood in my veins. _

_ We held on too tight, unwilling to let go. That’s why, in the end, we both fell. _

+++

A person with an addiction and an addict are the same in definition, but the practice is entirely different. A person with an addiction is reluctant, they turn to the object or substance of their focus just to satisfy a need that wasn’t previously there until they got hooked. An addict revels in the feeling, that moment when they give in despite every voice of reason flowing in their ears, the moment they succumb to their habits. A person with an addiction is able to be helped, an addict is already in the vicious cycle of relapse and recovery.

There’s many things people can get addicted to in their lifetimes. Alcohol, drugs, gambling, killing, pain, other people. Despite everything listed, the last one is the most dangerous in Minho’s opinion. He’s been addicted to most of those things, still is, but nothing has ever fucked him over like another person has. Alcohol didn’t walk out and leave him, drugs didn’t call him a liar and hit him where they knew it would hurt. Pain didn’t rip his heart out and throw it into the fucking ocean to drown. Another person did all of that, and he let them do it.

Out of all of Minho’s addictions, Han Jisung has been the most detrimental to his health.

There’s no AA meetings for people, no rehab centers or cognitive behavioral therapy that will undo what’s been done to him. The truth is, he doesn’t regret it, and perhaps that’s the most fucked up thing about it. He’ll blame on the pain addiction, blame it on the fact that he never once has been in the right state of mind around Han Jisung, but he doesn’t regret a damn thing. And he should, he should regret everything. The truth is, his hands feel empty even when they’re full, because they aren’t full with the one whose touch they long for. He can be kissed for hours and still feel nothing, because the beating of his heart and the explosions in his chest are reserved for one person who will never give him that feeling again. 

He doesn’t crave pity. As sad as he is, it isn’t anything new. In fact, his pain addiction is almost never satisfied anymore, for everything about him as gone numb to the feeling. He chases new highs and drops to the lowest of lows, hoping to feel something once again. But it never happens. It’s empty.

The truth, shall he ever attempt to face it, is that he and Jisung were doomed from the beginning. Everything about their meeting was wrong, everything about them was wrong. 

Minho was too new to the small town and its obsession with religion, too easy of a target for the local church. Jisung was too friendly on the first day of knowing him, too interested in everything about him and everything he was.

Minho thought it was a bit odd, even back then. The way Jisung was so well known throughout the congregation, the way he was looked up to and recognizable by name and face, and yet he stuck by Minho’s side every time, missed him on weekends he couldn’t attend. Minho didn’t care much for religion, but he went to church every weekend to see him.

Jisung was the grandson of beloved pastor at the church, the reason behind most of his popularity. The leaders adored him, treated him like a son of their own. However, Minho knew his secret, knew it before anybody else did. He knew Jisung wasn’t the boy he pretended to be in front of the church, and he would find that out fairly soon into their friendship. 

Jisung was a flirt, a trait Minho attributed as a key element of his personality for the first while. Little jokes and teases, touches and all too eager hand-holding were all brushed off at the beginning. Of course he noticed it, he wasn’t dense, but Jisung seemed to be a fairly charismatic guy, it made sense for his confidence to take form of flirtations. 

But after a few weeks, it suddenly dawned on Minho how often Jisung did it, how it was only ever Minho. And he decided to test his theory. 

He only had to do it once. A light touch that lingered just a bit too long, eyes that seemed to watch his movements a little too closely. Jisung snapped the very same day and asked Minho to hang out outside of their weekend activities.

Jisung was his first addiction. The way his eyes crinkled when he laughed, the precision of his hands when he rolled a blunt, laughter that encapsulated his entire body. Every word, every move he made was like a shot of serotonin to Minho’s brain and he couldn’t imagine how he lived his life sober before him. He was high on his best friend, high on the sexual tension and obvious attraction that radiated off of both of them.

His second addiction was weed. Jisung talked him into it a little too easily, though Minho didn’t like it at first. It was easy to get hooked though when his first addiction mixed with it. He began to crave the moments when Jisung would inhale, only to lean over and grab Minho’s chin in between his fingers and blow the smoke into his mouth. He craved the feeling of Jisung’s forehead against his and the hazy mindset he drifted into whenever the high kicked in. 

The third was alcohol. He didn’t like beer, still can’t stand it, but he very quickly found out how much he liked tequila. It wasn’t Jisung this time, it was his friend Changbin, who got him hooked on buzz in his veins when he drank enough. His confidence always skyrocketed and he felt warm and comfortable enough to curl up on Jisung’s chest. It was always nights like that that made him excited for Friday nights when Changbin would sneak his parents’ alcohol.

He became addicted to Jisung even further on a random Wednesday night, more specifically, to Jisung’s kiss. There wasn’t a need to shotgun anymore, especially since Minho learned how to roll his own and smoke by himself, but he always found himself leaning in, opening his mouth and letting Jisung’s chapped lips brush against his own. He craved more, he wanted more than anything to take it a step further. But he didn’t.

One Wednesday night, when the car was parked in an empty mall lot and they crowded into the back seat, Jisung’s fingers wrapped around Minho’s chin the way they always did when he was about to blow the smoke. On autopilot, Minho’s mouth opened and welcomed the slightly damp smoke that floated into his mouth. The entire exchange was so routine that Minho nearly flinched when Jisung’s tongue darted out and swiped across his bottom lip. 

They stared at each other for a moment, foreheads leaned against one another in the way they always did. This was new though, the tongue and the tense stare-off was an unexplored territory. Minho was more than willing to venture into it.

“You’re so pretty.” Jisung whispered, so deep in thought that Minho still thinks he wasn’t meant to hear that. He did, and Jisung knew he did. 

“Says you.” Minho murmured back, the brush of their lips every time he spoke drove him wild. The fingers on his chin tightened and Minho felt his stomach erupt with butterflies. He was frozen, waiting for the other to make a move.

“Something about you is so... strange.” Jisung’s eyes strayed away from his own, focusing on his entire face. The analytical gaze on his cheeks and nose made Minho’s hands curl into the sides of his pants, body squirming slightly. 

“I’m a good way?” God, he sounded so gone. Jisung made eye contact again, a short nod coming almost immediately.

“In the best way.” 

As if they weren’t close enough, Jisung shifted, his thigh pressed firmly into Minho’s now. The elder’s hands folded in his lap, not sure of where his hands belonged, but definitely not wanting to discourage Jisung’s advances.

“I’m correct to assume that this is mutual, right?” Every brush of his lips was making Minho melt, his heart pounding in his heart louder than bombs. The question hardly needed to be asked, but Minho could read the hesitance in his body language. Minho could not bare to drag this on any longer.

“Fuck yes.” He didn’t waste another torturous second dancing around it, their lips sliding together almost instantly. Jisung hummed low in his throat, kissing back with just as much vigor and desperation. As if a weight had been released from his chest, Minho sunk deeper and deeper into Jisung and he didn’t stop until he reached rock bottom. 

That was how it all started. 

They weren’t together. They made out in the back of Jisung’s car and shared weed, they held hands every time they were together and Minho was almost always found perched in Jisung’s lap around their friends. They danced and kissed and had late night talks deep into the morning. But they weren’t together. Jisung didn’t do commitment and Minho wasn’t sure it was necessary. 

But it wasn’t always great. 

The further into the scene Jisung fell, he dragged Minho with him. When weed turned to pills and pills turned to hallucinogens, they fell deeper and deeper into their highs and the chase of it. There wasn’t a moment they were together that they weren’t high or drunk, or sometimes both. They fought a lot more because of it, screaming fights that often led to the wrong words being shouted and slamming doors punctuating sentences. Drugs made it easier to forget it all, easier to make up the next day and pretend like those words didn’t sting even sober. 

Every fight was the same. They said something meaningless to them that they knew would cut deep, and when they sobered up in the morning, they would call and the other would answer. They would meet out on the front lawn, where whispered “I’m sorry”s was enough to undo all the damage. At least, enough to bury it deep to ignore. “It’s okay.” The other always said it’s okay, even when it wasn’t. It wasn’t okay, but it would be. They didn’t mean it, it would be okay.

It worked for a while, they were good together as long as they were influenced.

Minho never knew what Jisung was like completely sober, but he noticed the change when it happened. Jisung didn’t show up to as many parties as he used, didn’t wrap himself around Minho in a desperate attempt to fuck him in the bathrooms. He didn’t pass out in the street or nearly drown in the bathtub anymore. He had no interest in the scenes they frequented or the people they bought and sometimes stole from. But Minho did. He did all of those things and more.

One of the worst fights they ever had was the night Jisung drove Minho home from a party, where he attempted to sit in a bathtub of bubble bath and vinegar. A hairdryer left plugged in nearly fell into the liquid, had it not been for Jisung’s quick hand and timing.

“What if I wasn’t there? Huh? You think any of those guys would have helped you? You think they would have saved your life, Minho?” His voice was so loud, it pounded in Minho’s ears like an opening sam. His head was already aching, he didn’t need this, not tonight.

“Don’t be so dramatic.” Minho groaned, his hand pressing to his forehead. Before, he had wanted Jisung to come, wanted to lure him back into the scene to pull him out of whatever funk he’s been stuck in. Now, the yelling and the accusing was getting to be too much for Minho’s mind, especially when he was so loose-lipped from the high. He just wanted to go home.

“This is exactly why I stopped going to parties.” With a huff, Jisung turns onto Minho’s street without thinking, having been there so many times before. “You’re a mess, Minho. This is why I’ve been distant, you’re going to fucking kill yourself and I can’t sit around to watch it happen.”

“No.” Minho surprises himself with the giggle that follows his words, but his mouth is moving and he has no control to stop it. “You’re just jealous because you’re sad. You’re sad and the drugs don’t cover it up anymore.”

Jisung stares at him, frozen in his seat. It shouldn’t sting. Minho has no control over himself, he’s just saying things without knowing the meaning behind them. He doesn’t mean it, Jisung knows damn well he doesn’t. It shouldn’t sting, but it does. And Minho knows it does, even as his reddened eyes gaze into Jisung’s glassy ones.

“I fucking hate you.” Jisung spits, and there’s so much venom behind it that Minho flinches. The words swim around him brain for a moment, drinking in everything. He laughs again, mostly due to the fact that he’s giggly when high.

“No, you don’t.” He reclines against the seat, lolling his head over to gaze at Jisung. He almost makes the mistake of thinking the word “boyfriend” in his mind. But he doesn’t. Because that’s not what they are. “You love me.”

“No.” Jisung just shakes his head, eyes filling with something solemn and distant. It’s a look Minho decides he hates. “I love the giggly kid in glasses who made me feel like my life was worth living. That kid made me feel like I could do anything with him by my side. You? You’re a hot mess. I don’t even know you.”

And that makes Minho genuinely laugh. Drugs aside, his hazy mind clears for the slightest of moments, just enough for that comment to sink it. He laughs, because of how fucking dense Jisung is, how unaware he is of what’s happening. Surely, he doesn’t need it spelled out.

“I’m what you wanted me to be.” Is the first sentence out of Minho’s mouth thats entirely coherent and they both know he means every word he speaks. “You didn’t drag me to all those parties, blow smoke into my mouth and wrap your hand around my throat in the backseat because you wanted me to push you off and say no. You wanted me to be like you, to smoke and party and fuck like a rabbit. The problem now is that I’ve become too much like you. You don’t hate me, you hate the way you see yourself when you look at me.”

None of the responses his brain supplied him were able to escape Jisung’s mouth.  _ He’s trying to get under your skin,  _ his mind screamed,  _ think rationally.  _ Minho was just upset and high and probably feeling the effects of the line he did earlier off the bathroom sink. Nothing he said held any weight, he’d apologize in the morning and Jisung would say it was okay.

“Get out.” He tries to keep his voice level, though it wavers just a bit, “We’ll talk in the morning.”

“No, you know what? I’m too scared to say this when I can think straight, so I’ll say it now.” When Minho’s eyes turned to him, he could see just the slightest flicker of misery. “Why did you want me so bad, Jisung? Why did you want to ruin me?”

“I didn’t ruin you, those were your choices.” His brain couldn't even comprehend Minho’s words, the distress written in the frown line on his face. He couldn’t understand why Minho would ask such a thing, phrase it in a way that made it seem like he'd wondered the answer for a while. 

“Oh but you can’t deny that you influenced me, that you knew I would do anything to impress you.” The anguish in his voice was gone, replaced with a bitter acid soaking each word he spit. “You wanted me to be like this. You saw a blank canvas, a kid who was going to turn out alright and you got jealous. You wanted me so you could destroy me.”

“Get out!” Jisung erupted, every bit of his composure shattering. Is that what Minho really thought of him? Is that what he’d always thought of him? “I said get the fuck out!”

Minho didn’t move. In fact, he pressed closer, face twisted in anger and hurt. He didn’t have any right to be hurt, not when he was sitting here accusing Jisung of destroying him. 

“You ruined me! Just so you could feel a little bit better about how ruined you are and now you want to play God complex? Sick fucking move, Jisung, you’re sick!”

“Get out!” 

His shout echoed against the interior of his own car, skin burning hot and mind fuzzy. The tears gathering in his eyes were barely hidden by the yellow street lamps above. Every word burned him inside and out, he didn’t know how much longer he could sit in that car and listen to himself be berated

This time, Minho didn’t put up any fight. The seat belt clicked open, smacking the back of the seat and the car lock being undone was the only sound filling the silence. He paused, one leg out of the car and his body hanging on the edge. From his peripherals, Jisung saw those red eyes look back at him for a moment. 

“Don’t bother calling in the morning.”

The door slammed shut and he sat silently in the drive as Minho continued to his front door without sparing him a glance. The soft tapping of bugs flying into the lights and the quiet hum from underneath him when the car started again were the only noise that kept his brain from losing it. He watched until the light in Minho’s room turned on and leaked through his curtains, and then he backed out of the driveway and drove himself home.

In the morning, he took Minho’s advice and didn’t pick up his phone to call him. Instead, he woke up, got dressed and drove his car down Minho’s street. For a few moments, he just waited. The gentle morning breeze in his blond hair and the soft chirping of birds nesting in the trees comforted him, eased his racing mind and treasonous thoughts. Sometimes, the burning of his palm when it pressed against the hot top of his car didn’t hurt, if anything, it soothed him. 

Minho was right, he knew as much. Long ago, he had discovered that what brewed inside him was too heavy to be combated with a pretty pill or another white line. He could choke on pills and stuff his nose until his lungs exhausted from lack of oxygen, but nothing would ease the despair that clawed at his mind every waking hour of the day. He knew that, but he didn’t need to hear Minho say it.

It took maybe twelve minutes of standing outside his home for Minho to open the front door, still clad in baggy pajamas and messy hair and his little round glasses he hadn’t worn in months. His bare feet pounded against the grass of his front lawn, still damp from the night’s retreat, but he didn’t care one bit. His arms encircled Jisung, pulling their bodies flush against one another, his breathing quiet and hot on his neck.

“I’m sorry.” He whispered, one hand traveling up the back of Jisung’s neck and holding on for dear life. There was desperation in the lines left on his skin from Minho’s fingernails, “I’m so sorry.”

Jisung didn’t say anything.

Minho clung to him like the world was ending, and perhaps it was, for Jisung. He couldn’t live like this anymore, he couldn’t stand back and watch as his life got washed in a hallucination caused by a few little tabs on his tongue. There was more to him than this, but he had to give so much of himself away in order to find it. He knew at that moment. He knew it was better for the both of them. He knew Minho would hate him.

But he didn’t have a choice. Not anymore.

+++

Minho had many addictions. Drinking, drugs, pain, lying, Jisung. He was addicted to each in a different way from the others. Pain and lying were developed on his own, the only addictions Jisung didn’t bring him into. Minho could lie his way out of any situation ever, he was a master at it. He lied so easily, so convincingly. Jisung never once doubted that Minho could manage to lie to himself. He was quite the persuader.

But Jisung also knew how dangerous that skill of his was. Minho could lie to anyone about anything, he could manipulate even the greatest of lie detectors to see his way. He could hide his feelings too easily, with a simple lie. 

The lies started simple, things like homework and accidents and times where the skill was needed. The more he exercised it, the easier it became to lie and the easier it became to convince. He lied about everything now, a time when lying wasn’t even necessary or important. He lied just to be a liar. He enjoyed it almost.

For some foolish reason, Jisung always thought Minho wouldn’t lie to him. He was the exception to his habits, the same way he was the exception to most things for Minho. However, he knew he had been wrong the moment he watched Minho answer his phone from across the party, just out of the older’s view, and listened to the simple lie that poured from his lips. 

“Where are you?”

“At a small get together.”

“Oh really? Who are you with?” 

A glance at the boy sitting beside him, whose eyes raked over his body just a little too obviously. “Nobody.”

It wasn’t cheating. Hell, Jisung didn’t even know if Minho had done anything with that guy, or if he just deemed him too insignificant to mention. In hindsight, the latter is the most appropriate for Minho. He saw people as disposable, replaceable. Jisung was the exception. 

Minho loved him. He knew that. But in a moment where he needed Minho to hate him, he convinced himself that he already did.

“You’re a liar.” His words kept simple as they sat on the hood on his car in yet another empty parking lot under the stars. The collar of Minho’s shirt was stretched from the night’s earlier activities, hanging off his shoulders. Something was off and they both had noticed it. 

“You knew that.” Minho’s voice was cold, the way it always was when he was expecting something. Minho didn’t like surprises, and he always tended to shut down his emotions when he knew one was coming. He was especially hard to read during these times.

“Yeah, I did.” Jisung swallowed around the lump in his throat, hands balled into fists by his lap. “Maybe I just thought you wouldn’t lie to me.”

“Why would you think that? That was stupid.” Minho didn’t turn to look at him at any point in his response, a lit cigarette held right in between his middle and index finger. He brought it to his lips and inhaled, face as blank as an untouched sheet of paper.

“Do I mean anything?” Jisung had to know, though he knew the answer might rip him in half. Minho took another drag from the stick, smoke crowding around his sharp features.

“I don’t know.” He replied, his face finally turned toward Jisung, “Do I?”

His heart broke in his chest, but this isn’t what he came here for. He came with news, with a reason for Minho to truly hate him. There’s no more dancing around it, he couldn’t stand the thought. 

“I’m going to rehab.” 

He didn’t know what he expected. Maybe he wanted Minho to stare at him and shout, maybe he wanted there to be a fight, proof that Minho didn’t want him to leave. Maybe he wanted proof that Minho wanted him. But Minho didn’t falter his movements, voice as monotonous as it was in the beginning. 

“Okay.” He didn’t have another reaction to offer.

“I’m going to be gone. For a long time.” 

“Okay.”

“You should go too.” 

Minho sighed, the cigarette dropping from his mouth. Empty eyes stared into the void of the night. The only sign that he's still alive is the occasional slow blinking of his eyes. 

“I’m not addicted to anything.” It was a lie, but nobody knew that but Minho and he was still lying to himself about it. Jisung’s gaze burned a hole into the side of his face, but he didn’t give in and look at him.

“No. But maybe it’s a chance to fix…” He didn’t want to say it. Saying it only ever seemed to infuriate Minho, even bringing it up always struck a nerve in him. Jisung wasn’t stupid, he knew he was partly at fault for Minho’s predicament, but Minho didn’t seem to blame it. He should. He should blame him.

“That’s what this is really about, isn’t it?” There was that venom again, seeping from his mouth all over the concrete beneath their feet. Jisung knew he had to tread carefully to not get stuck in it. “I told you everything you need to know. The fact that you’re surprised isn't my fault. I warned you, and you took the risk. Don’t pretend this is all me.”

It wasn’t. In fact, very little of it was actually Minho, but Jisung knew speaking of it any further was not the right move. Besides, they both knew the next words out of his mouth were coming, they knew from the moment they sat down. Jisung was leaving and Minho had no interest in his help. 

“I think we should break up.”

Minho took a long drag, a scoff escaping him as soon as the smoke set in. He sounded genuinely annoyed, pissed even.

“Come on. Don’t lie to yourself after calling me a liar. To break up, we would’ve had to be together in the first place.” The cigarette bud landed on the ground in front of them, the weight on the hood shifting when Minho stood. Jisung didn’t say a word as he left, staring at the dying bud and every promise that died with it. 

Minho didn’t answer his calls the next morning. Minho didn’t come out of his house when Jisung stood in front of it at noon. Minho didn’t give him the time of day for the next two weeks until Jisung left for the rehab center. He disappeared entirely, and took Jisung’s heart with him.

It was always okay. But this time, it wouldn’t be.


End file.
